The following has been taken from the Subject Knowledge Requirements for Entry into Computer Science Teacher Training (Feb 2013)

SKR5 = Communication and the Internet

A student about to embark on a primary teacher training course as a CS specialist should know, understand and be able to:

• Explain what the World Wide Web and the Internet are, and explain the difference.
• Outline the key features of the World Wide Web and their relationships - eg browsers, URLs, navigation methods.
• Outline how data are transported on the Internet, including packets and the notion of a protocol.
• Explain the role of search engines and what happens when a user requests a web page in a browser.
• Explain the technological perspective on safety and security.

In addition to the above a student about to embark on a secondary teacher training course as a CS specialist should know, understand and be able to:

• Explain the concepts of: client/server models; MAC addresses, IP addresses and domain names; and cookies.
• Explain a 'real protocol' e.g. using telnet to interact with a HTTP server.
• Explain routing, redundancy and error correction, encryption and security.

The following has been taken from the Computers At School's Computer Science Curriculum

Communication and the Internet

Key Stage 1

• That the World Wide Web contains a very large amount of information.
• Web browser is a program used to view pages.
• Each website has a unique name
• Enter a website address to view a specific website and navigate between pages and sites using hyperlinks.

Key Stage 2

• The Internet is a collection of computers connected together sharing the same way of communicating. The Internet is not the web, and the web is not the Internet.
• These connections can be made using a range of technologies.
• The Internet supports multiple services.
• The relationship between web servers, web browsers, websites and web pages.
• The format of URLs
• The role of search engines in allowing users to find specific web pages and a basic understanding of how results may be ranked.
• Issues of safety and security from a technical perspective.

Key Stage 3

• A network is a collection of computers working together.
• An end-to-end understanding of what happens when a user requests a web page in a browser, including:
  • Browser and server exchange messages over the network
  • What is in the messages (http request and HTML)
  • The structure of a web page - HTML, style sheets, hyperlinking to resources
  • What the server does (fetch the file and send it back)
  • What the browser does (interpret the file, fetch others, and display the lot)
• How data is transported on the Internet
  • Packets and packet switching
  • Simple protocols: an agreed language for two computers to talk to each other.
• How search engines work and how to search effectively. Advanced search queries with Boolean operators.